


Morning Coffee

by lizbobjones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean isn't in it but it's emotionally Destiel, Episode: s07e17 The Born-Again Identity, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-25 17:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7541911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <a href="http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/125591748973/longing-retcon-dictates-that-cas-can-pinpoint">original post</a>
</p>
    </blockquote>





	Morning Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> [original post](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/125591748973/longing-retcon-dictates-that-cas-can-pinpoint)

“It’s worse today.”

Daphne looks up from sorting through their mail; there are more petitions than ever from those seeking the faith healer - word is spreading. Worry weighs down her stomach when she sees Emmanuel is rubbing his forehead like he’s in pain. 

It scares her how fleeting this arrangement seems: that something is indescribably wrong or broken with him. That at any moment she might turn around and find him gone forever, wandering out of her life as abruptly as he appeared in it.

She says to herself that he may as well not touch the ground: there is uneaten toast in front of him, untouched coffee beside it. It would probably be the same if he ever came to bed, but they have been married months and he still hadn’t once seemed tired or seemingly noticed the passing of time. She finds him in the morning where she had left him reading in the lounge the night before, or at 2am he’s still staring a hole through the shopping channels on TV, or he’s out tending the garden at 6am when she wakes to go running. But he always comes and sits with her at breakfast, as soon as she has placed down his cup of coffee that he won’t drink.

And always, whatever else he’s doing, he will stop and look in a direction, over his shoulder or straight ahead, and his brow will furrow and he will listen with frustration, even pain. He seems fully aware she catches him doing it, but this is the first time he’s ever mentioned it: the way he is, he clearly expected her to just know they were finally discussing it, like she’d asked him over breakfast every morning how he was doing.

“I could get you some ibuprofen,” she says, because she is still making him a plate of toast every morning, like eventually she can cast an anchor to stop him drifting and these little human things might do it, and maybe he is just a man.

His hand drops away and he fixes her with a glare that still can’t cover the helplessness in his eyes. “I don’t have a headache. I don’t get headaches.”

Daphne puts down the letter she’s been skimming, and reaches across the table for his hand with both of hers. “I want to help, Emmanuel. You know I do. Maybe this is what you are missing. Tell me about it. Perhaps it will help you find what you’ve lost.”

He looks away - a gaze that seems to be trying to look a thousand miles into the distance, like something way beyond seeing is distracting him as he struggles to put words to it.

“I need to help,” he eventually says, but looks uncertain that is correct.

“You do,” she says earnestly, dropping his hands to fan out the letters on the table. “All these people come to you for healing, and you…” She doesn’t know what he does to them. He helps them.

Emmanuel shakes his head. He wraps his fingers around the coffee mug for something to do with his empty hands, but he doesn’t take a sip. “There’s someone I need to help.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I… feel there’s somewhere I need to be. They move around: every day they’re somewhere else.”

“Are you sure it’s not –”

“It’s always the same person. He doesn’t have a voice, not in so many words, but he always feels the same. I can feel that he needs me. It’s a pressure constantly in my thoughts, but sometimes it’s worse…” He pauses, and when she doesn’t know what to say, he adds rather more wryly, “I tried googling it for advice, but human vocabulary doesn’t cover the sensation adequately and it seems no one else has this problem.”

Daphne has caught him saying “human” before; when he’d been arguing with the concept of dish soap. When he found out about the garbage island caught in the Pacific’s currents. She lets it slide one more time. “What about the man who needs you? What do you know about him?”

“Nothing. He doesn’t know he’s doing it: he never asks for me. He never tells me what he needs. I feel like if he would, if he would call out to me clearly, I could find him, somehow I would be able to go to him and help him. I know that I have to.”

“And it’s worse today?”

“It happens when he’s closer. Or in more pain.” Emmanuel pauses and adds darkly, “Or both.” 

“Perhaps you should try and find him. I’d help you. We could load up the car and head out in the direction you sense he’s in. You can do extraordinary things, Emmanuel. I am sure he exists.”

“He might do, but I don’t think he wants to see me.”

“But you said…”

“He is lost and afraid, but he’s angry, resentful. Frequently drunk.” For some reason that makes Emmanuel smile almost wistfully. “I think he has to find me in his own time.”

Daphne nods, and looks back at the letters once more. He should be allowed a personal day: she’ll make calls and cancel the appointments he already has. “Why don’t you take the morning to clear your head? Go for a walk. Stop trying to distract yourself and listen to what he has to say.”

“Nothing good,” Emmanuel replies, and that is the end of the discussion as he gets up and leaves. He is already dressed and immaculately clean - he hasn’t showered since she’d brought him home and washed the river water off him, though he had already smelled surprisingly less swampy even by the end of the one car journey - and he abandons his toast where she had put it; his coffee is inexplicably still warm and steaming where his hands had been around the mug, while hers had gone cold.


End file.
